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The Russian Foreign Minister has urged Georgia to restore normal relations with ethnic minorities living in Georgia. It sounds as if there were no other problems in Russo-Georgian relations than this. As if everything else between Russia and Georgia were fine.
Maybe Russia thinks that making such a statement will help it gain the support of at least a little part of Georgian population. Just like the Georgian government does when it appeals to minorities in the run-up to elections. The difference though it that the minority living in regions do actually support current government for number of reasons, I know that from my experience of working there and an opportunity to monitor elections in one of the regions, having chance to talk to people. People there support government because it was the Rose Revolution that improved their living conditions, it was the Rose Revolution as a result of which peasants now can drive on normal roads to sell their goods and don't have to pay to corrupt police on the road. Life for them has changed. Now they also have the water supply and electricity. And they are afraid to loose it all again, to go back to Zviad Gamsakhurdia times under the "Georgia for Georgians" regime which excluded ethnic minority, or Eduard Shevardnadze's period of darkness and corruption. Building infrastructure was the tool for the Georgian government that guaranteed the support of these people, and these people don't care about world politics.
In contrast to the Georgian government the Russians are offering the Georgian ethnic minorities nothing. All they can offer is another instability, another conflict, but already inside of Georgia, to make it weaker. Complaining that the Council of Europe ignores or keeps silence over those violations as if they would ever care what Europeans thought or said.
What about the situation concerning ethnic minority issue in Russia itself?
Russia, the country where a dark skinned person can't walk the streets in the evening because he can easily be beaten or even killed by group of Russian nationalists, the country where they don't care what nationality you are as far as you are from the Caucasus, you'll anyway be called "black assed", would you be from Azerbaijan, Armenia, Chechnya, Georgia, Tajikistan etc, and at same time they let other representative of ethnic minority hold high positions in government, show business or other spheres probably due to some other specific credits. And while the Russian government pontificates about the condition of ethnic minorities in Georgia, they do nothing to prevent violence against people of different ethnic origins in Russia. The Foreign Minister of this country accuses Georgian in committing “big enough violations in the sphere of ethnic minority rights in the country".
I wouldn't deny problems that exist in our country would that be ethnic minority issues or other internal problems, just he who lives in a glass house shouldn't throw stones!
